Sputnik was a cause of the Space Race in 1957 because the United States saw the launching of Sputnik as a Soviet challenge and joined the Space Race competition.
Explanation:
The space race was a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted approximately from 1957 to 1975. It involved the parallel effort between the two countries to explore outer space with artificial satellites, to send humans into space and to pose a human being in Moon.
Although its roots lie in the early rocket technologies and international tensions that followed World War II, the space race actually began after the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. The term originated as an analogy of the arms race. The space race became an important part of the cultural and technological rivalry between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War. Space technology became a particularly important arena in this conflict, both because of its potential military applications and because of its psychological effects on the morale of the population.
